long hot dark day in hell

[katzklaw]

so let's set the stage. it was 90 degrees in sunny northern Wisconsin this fine day at the Big Yellow campground. that's pretty hot for up north. was kinda humid, too. now, the office i work in has poor airflow, so even with 3 air conditioners (the central unit and 2 window units) and a fan, on a day like this it's so hot in the office that i'm sweating all day and even the guests comment things like "oh, you don't have AC in here?" it's been a busy, but normal day. renting bikes, sending tubers to the river, telling people they have to pay for the water slide AT the water slide... normal stuff...

and then... only a couple hours into my day... the first inkling of the disaster to come.... someone walks in and tells me their power is out. ok. no big deal. breakers pop and people can't figure out how to flip them back on all by themselves... sometimes breakers even go bad. i'll just call someone and... wait... now there's 2 people saying their power is out... 3? more?? all on the same row. now it's 'call the owner to come check out the power problem" time... we have an ancient breaker that tripped on us and gave us crap 3 weeks ago, but has behaved since then... well today it wanted to act up again... while we were full... in 90 degree heat.... joy

so while we were dealing with THAT... maybe another 30-40 minutes later someone else comes in and tells me their power is out... only this time.. it's not a site on the front row governed by the faulty breaker. at first i think it's another localized problem... someone tried to run their AC and their hot plate and their TV and their curling iron all at the same time or something... it happens... but just after i dispatched maintenance to go check on this new problem someone else comes in and informs me their power is off also... then another... then another.... then another..........

both the owners and most of the maintenance team is scrambling to try to find answers. the electrician got called... twice... i'm not sure what caused them to come to the realization, but it turned out the new problem was being caused by an underground transformer that died...queue emergency call to the power company (to their credit they came out to work on it very quickly)

so from about 2 hours into my day on, the office turned into a revolving door of "when will the power be back on?" "what's wrong with the power?" "is there an ETA" "i'm not happy for XYZ reason. (more than one claimed medical issues, and 2 were concerned about pets overheating)" and people getting progressively nastier with each return trip to the office.

end result: approximately half the park out of power for 4 +/- hours on the hottest day of the year... and then the front row that went off originally went BACK off after 30 minutes after the power kicked back on after the power company fixed things (we still have that faulty breaker after all), 3 bags of ice and half a dozen flashlights given out free (flashlights were for cabins. no power, no light....can't see to prep to go to bed... blah blah), 1 free night of camping on a future date given to everyone on the front row who would take it, 2 reservations canceled with FULL refunds (no normal $10 cancellation fee) along with swearing they would NEVER CAMP HERE EVER AGAIN, 5 demands for refunds so they could 'go somewhere else with electricity (none given, by the way), and around a dozen early departures... including one fine gentleman who drove the wrong way up the entrance, yelled out his window at us, gave the 1 finger salute, and revved his engine while leaving (i'm sure if he hadn't been pulling a 30something foot fifth wheel he would have peeled out, too).

and on top of all that... right in the middle of all that... someone came into the office... and said "there are alot of cars driving past our site (they had an end site) and it's getting dust all over out food and ice and everything. is there anything you can do?" i'm thinking you're CAMPING... in the WOODS.. and we have GRAVEL ROADS... no. go away and quit bothering me... but my co-worker, the office lead, handled that one. said no sorry not really anything we can do. so the SC is like "well can you wet the road?" lolwut?????? WET THE ROAD? if we wet it just enough to kill the dust it'll be dry again in 10 minutes. if we wet it enough it won't dry quickly, it'll be a mud pit. srsly wtf????!?!? my coworker said, and i quote, "not gonna happen." she was complained on later. when she explained herself to the owner when he asked about it, he laughed, and threw away the note.

[katzklaw]

so it seems that on top of everything else, one of our tubing van drivers drove around someone who was "blocking traffic for a funeral procession" to go drop off some tubers. sounds bad, right? except it was just a guy on a motorcycle, with the actual procession nowhere in sight yet. no cops. no hearse. no way for the van driver to tell that this was anything other than a scruffy biker on the side of the road waving his arms.

so afterward the guy comes into our office all piss fire and vinegar wanting to speak to a manager. my office lead co-worker got to field that one, too. so the guy is like "i DEMAND the van driver give a PERSONAL apology to the widow." co-worker broke out her "not gonna happen" again. he blustered for a while then said that he filmed the van and if the driver doesn't come down to (location) in the next few days to give a personal apology to the widow, he was going to post the video all over social media. my co-worker almost said "oh good. free advertising" but managed to keep it to "ok" he finally left. again, when the owner heard the story, he laughed, said "not gonna happen" and crumpled up the note and tossed it.

the kicker? the "location" that i left out of the story? is the STRIP BAR that's just 1/2 mile or so down the back road around the corner from the park! the funeral procession consisted of about 5 minutes of motorcycles roaring past the park. and the deceased was the bar owner. sorry, but no. we're not going to go down to a strip bar just to apologize to the late owner's wife for continuing to run our business when we can't actually tell that it's a funeral procession (again keeping in mind the van driver saw ONLY the one biker that he went around. no cops to block traffic, no hearse or procession yet)

i'm going to be keeping an eye on facebook and twitter in the next few days. probably be good for a laugh.


oh yeah, and the power is STILL out on the front row. so glad i don't work until this afternoon today >.>

[EricKei]

On the off chance it does get posted....see if there are any cops in sight. They might not be too happy about unauthorized blocking of a traffic thru-way by civilians, no matter how noble the intent.

[Kristev]

I'm exhausted just reading all of that. But then again, I prefer to worship nature from afar.

[katzklaw]

and update... one of the people who left in a huff with a promise to never return, along with canceling their future reservations... called in again today. apparently, according to her, the "power surge" (there wasn't one) fried her converter in her trailer, and she was DEMANDING a refund of her full stay, and when i said i couldn't authorize that, she DEMANDED to speak to someone who could and she was going to hold until someone picked up despite the fact that chances are no one was going to be able to handle it today... the owner takes Sundays off for church, so he's usually unreachable, but after yesterday's debacle, he had his radio on him, and i was able to get ahold of him.

apparently the TL;DR of their conversation went as thus: SC b*tches at owner in a nasty manner, owner tells her to buy some manners and hangs up on her, she calls back, they talk for much longer this time, but she still doesn't get her way, so she curses him out and hangs up. haven't heard back from her, but i'm thinkin it might be a good idea for the owner to dig out her receipt so they have it handy to show the signature if she decides to try to dispute the charge.

[WishfulSpirit]

Power...was out...at a campground.... How did they know? Sorry maybe it's just that I grew up doing REAL camping (in an actual tent). I'd like to tell some campers if you want to stay in a hotel, just do that. Drive up to the mountains for your hike. Don't call it camping if you're not actually camping.

[katzklaw]

"camping" in an RV is cheaper than most hotel rooms, and you get to sleep in your own bed...

but yeah. we get people come out here who are upset that we 1. don't have cable, 2. only get 1 over-the-air channel, and 3. have WAY too many trees to even THINK about satellite. so of course these same people decide to try to stream netflix or hulu or something on our free wifi while there's another 800 people here, so they kill the wifi for everyone.... and then complain that the wifi doesn't work. dumbarses.

[eltf177]

On the off chance it does get posted....see if there are any cops in sight. They might not be too happy about unauthorized blocking of a traffic thur-way by civilians, no matter how noble the intent.

This exactly. One of my jobs is to chase off vehicles illegally blocking roads, mostly construction vehicles waiting to unload. Before/after hours? Nobody flagging traffic? You leave, or I get a cop to write you up!

[dendawg]

Power...was out...at a campground....

Damn it...Now I've got Bill Shatner in my head!

[wolfie]

This exactly. One of my jobs is to chase off vehicles illegally blocking roads, mostly construction vehicles waiting to unload. Before/after hours? Nobody flagging traffic? You leave, or I get a cop to write you up!

Saw a WTF one yesterday. This must have been authorized, since there was a cop car leading and another one trailing. Can't call it a bike since it had 4 wheels, but a women's fitness center had a human-powered vehicle out on a main road during rush hour, with a couple block long platoon of cars with steamed drivers following it. Seats 3 across, 5 or 6 rows, all pedaling away and moving at a crawl.

[katzklaw]

you'd think with that many people peddling they could go a mite faster, eh? XD

[wolfie]

Actually, those things usually go SLOWER than a regular bike. Why? Because it would be extremely complex and expensive to have a derailleur between each set of pedals and the common drive system (so each rider could set their own resistance level), it has to be geared so that if it's carrying the riders with the lowest horsepower-to-weight ratio it can still go up the steepest hill in the area where it's operated. A regular bike doesn't need to be geared this low, since the rider can get off and walk it uphill. With this contraption, that's not an option.